Here is another story!
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My son is 13months old (baby #2 is on the way and due in January!). In general he’s a great kid with a fantastic disposition (everyone says this about him). We implemented babywise from day 1 and it went great.We had some tough CIO moments the first few months, but he eventually got the hang of it. Naptime has never been consistenly 100% cry-free, but some days he goes w/o a fight, and others it just takes a little while. Anyway, nighttime was perfect from about 8 weeks old til about 9 months old, when he started having a bad time with teething. Because he never ever woke up at night, when he started doing it at 9 mos, I would run into his room and hold him and comfort him til he fell back asleep, thinking it was a pain/discomfort thing that would pass. Well, I ended up creating a bad habit by going in his room when he’d wake up every other night or so over the next few weeks. It got to the point that I would go to bed wondering whether or not I would get a good night’s sleep – not the way a babywise mom is supposed to feel, especially at 9-10mos! He also started getting up at 6am instead of the usual 7am (not sure if this was a summertime thing too). After awhile and a lot of ups and downs (and getting into the habit of me having to rub his back to get him to sleep), my husband mandated ‘baby boot camp’ in which he encouraged me to really get back to the basics of Babywise and re-set our son’s habits. It was definitely bad at first (lots of screaming the first couple nights) but after a couple weeks it’s gotten to the point where he’ll just whine when he knows I’m leaving the room, and once I’m gone he settles down to sleep all night til 7am. He also is going to sleep better at naptime – still some fussing sometimes, but he gets the picture that no one is coming to get him, so he gives up the fight pretty quickly.
All this is to say that I love Babywise and am definitely going to use it for all of my children. I also think it’s important to note that (as your blog definitely teaches) Babywise definitely does not just take you through the first 3 months and then send you off on cruise control – it’s something you need to keep revisiting and studying and re-implementing when necessary. Kids are dynamic, and our treatment of them needs to adapt accordingly, but it’s so important to come back to the basic principles every time.
Summer Ellis